Peres Center for Peace and Innovation

The architects' account of the building is short and unusually explicit about intention. Studio Fuksas describes a building that represents time and patience in strata of alternating materials representing places that have suffered heavily, with a stone basement as its foundation and two long staircases leading to a place of rest, lit from above. The facade, in their words, uses alternate layers of concrete and translucent glass, so that daylight is filtered inward during the day and sent back outside after dark.

The reading that stuck locally is geological rather than historical. Reporting in April 2016, the Ynet architecture supplement xnet described the concept as geological layers of concrete and glass in the colours of the water and the rocks visible through the sea-facing windows. That is the version most guides use, and it is easy to check against the view.

The project figures do not agree. Studio Fuksas gives 1999 to 2009, a site of 7,000 square metres, a floor area of 2,500 square metres over what Hebrew Wikipedia counts as five floors, and a cost of 15 million dollars. The xnet report of 2016 put the investment at about 16 million and said other estimates were higher. English Wikipedia records an initial estimate of 6 million dollars and three years, citing Haaretz reporting of August 2009 that both had been heavily underestimated. Only the first is the builder's own number.

The Emilio Ambasz Prize list of March 2010 places the building first in its category, credited to Massimiliano Fuksas Architects with Yoav Messer as architect of record in Israel. First place for landscape on the same list went to the rehabilitation of the Jaffa slope and beach, the works that produced the park immediately north of here.

• Architects: Massimiliano and Doriana Fuksas, with Yoav Messer as architect of record
• Project years: 1999 to 2009, per Studio Fuksas
• 2,500 square metres of floor area over five floors, on a 7,000 square metre site
• Cost: 15 million dollars per the architects, about 16 million per xnet in 2016
• Emilio Ambasz Prize 2010, first place in the building category

The plot was part of the government hospital in Jaffa, which shut in the 1980s. Hebrew Wikipedia records the cornerstone ceremony for the Peres Peace House in 2003 and places it in the Givat Aliya neighbourhood; the English entry puts the building in Ajami. Both names describe the same stretch of south Jaffa, and the difference is a fair warning that boundaries here are argued about. The xnet report adds that the land was leased from the Tel Aviv-Yafo municipality.

The immediate neighbours are worth knowing before arriving. A Muslim cemetery adjoins the building on the south side, visible from the auditorium along with the open sea. Around the building is a public park, called the Peace Park on the Hebrew side, which runs to the shoreline and costs nothing to walk. Inland are the housing blocks of Givat Aliya and, more recently, expensive residential projects.

The building's relationship with that neighbourhood has been the main criticism of it, and it was made at length before the exhibition existed. In April 2016 xnet described a prestigious architectural object that had never integrated with its surroundings, sitting on a large plot facing the sea and turning a blank back to Jaffa's Arab residents, standing empty most days of the year and used by roughly forty people, with attempts at dialogue with the neighbours reported as unsuccessful and the garden down to the beach named as the neighbourhood's only real gain. That article was itself an argument for converting the building, so weigh it as reporting from before the change rather than as a verdict on what is there now. The geometry has not changed: the entrance faces inland from Kedem Street, the views face west, and the walk to the water is the part of the site open to anyone.

The pivot was reported before it was announced. In April 2016 xnet wrote that the organisation was working on turning the building into an innovation centre telling the story of the start-up nation, possibly with a technology hub inside it, that the works would take roughly two years, and that the investment was then estimated at about 10 million shekels. It also recorded that the new name had not yet been settled.

In June 2016 the Peres Center announced the Israeli Innovation Center, according to Hebrew Wikipedia, and the organisation took the name it now uses. Shimon Peres, who had laid the cornerstone for the new project, died on 28 September 2016 and did not see it open. The Nobel Foundation's record of him is the short version of why the building carries his name: born 16 August 1923 in Vishneva, foreign minister at the time of his award, and one of three who shared the 1994 Nobel Peace Prize for their efforts to create peace in the Middle East.

The official inauguration was held on 25 October 2018. Ynet, reporting from the ceremony that morning, put the prime minister, the vice president of China and figures from the international technology industry in attendance, among them Alibaba's founder Jack Ma and Google's Eric Schmidt. Hebrew Wikipedia dates the opening to ordinary visitors to 2019: an inauguration in late 2018, general admission the following year.

So the two halves of the site have quite different ages. The shell, the layered facade, the auditorium and the park are as built in 2009. Everything a ticket buys is an interior fit-out carried out between 2016 and 2018 and refreshed since, in rooms that had been offices and empty lobby. Nothing here was reconstructed from anything older: the hospital that stood on the ground was gone decades before the first drawing.

• April 2016: conversion reported, investment then estimated at about 10 million shekels
• June 2016: the Israeli Innovation Center announced
• 28 September 2016: Shimon Peres dies
• 25 October 2018: official inauguration ceremony
• 2019: opens to ordinary visitors

The exhibition is organised as named rooms rather than galleries, and the Hebrew site sets them out by level: the Innovation Nation on floor 1, the Capsule on floor 2, the contemporary innovation gallery on level minus 1, and the Secrets of Innovation on the entrance floor. That makes four levels of the five-floor building, matching Ynet's description at the opening. The English pages number some of the same rooms differently, so treat the floor labels as approximate and follow the guide.

What each room does is stated plainly enough by the centre. The Inspiration Hall surrounds visitors with floor-to-ceiling screens. The Innovation Nation is an interactive timeline with games covering high technology, medicine, agriculture and society; Ynet reported 100 events displayed along it at the opening. The Secrets of Innovation is a digital encounter in which pioneers of Israeli innovation answer questions, and Hebrew Wikipedia names the holograms as including Gil Shwed, Ruth Arnon and Amnon Shashua. The Capsule is the virtual reality room, a journey through digital medicine, food technology, smart transport, nano-robots and space travel. The Israeli Expo on the lowest level shows working start-ups in rotating cohorts; Ynet reported a floor of the 50 newest developments at the opening.

The Study is the room that is not about technology. The centre presents it as an opportunity to visit the office of President Shimon Peres, with an audiovisual display about his life. What is not published is how much of the room stands as he left it, and the accounts even differ on which floor his office was, with Hebrew Wikipedia putting it on the third and the 2016 xnet report on the top one. Treat it as a presentation of the man rather than a preserved interior.

The centre also lists a separate exhibition by the photographer Ziv Koren on 7 October 2023 and after, which it describes as memorialising the greatest disaster that has ever occurred in the State of Israel, with part of the proceeds going to the Hostages and Missing Families Forum. Its page carries a warning that the exhibition includes content that is not easy to view. It is ticketed separately at 40 NIS and is not part of the standard tour.

• Entrance floor: the Secrets of Innovation, the hologram encounter
• Floor 1: the Innovation Nation, the interactive timeline
• Floor 2: the Capsule, the virtual reality room
• Level minus 1: the Israeli Expo of working start-ups
• The Study: an audiovisual room presented as Shimon Peres's office

The practical fact that catches people out is that there is no walk-up admission. Both language versions say visits must be pre-booked through the website, and the Hebrew ticket page states outright that tickets cannot be bought on site.

There are also no fixed opening hours to quote, because the centre does not publish any. Its English visitor information page says opening hours vary and can be found on the booking page; the Hebrew page puts it more precisely, that operating hours follow the tours and events listed on the ticket-purchase pages. Read on 13 August 2026, that booking system listed tours Sunday to Friday with none on Saturday, starting between 10.00 and 15.30 from Sunday to Thursday and between 10.00 and 12.30 on Friday. Those were the sessions on sale that day, not a published timetable.

Language is the other thing to settle at the point of booking. The centre advertises tours in English, Hebrew, Arabic and Chinese, and says video content is subtitled in Hebrew, Arabic, English and Spanish. The calendar read on 13 August 2026 was mostly Hebrew sessions with a smaller number in English and a single Spanish one, so an English tour on a particular morning is not a given.

The published prices do not match between the centre's two language sites. Both give 69 NIS for a standard ticket, but the English page discounts online booking to 54 NIS where the Hebrew page says 58, and the two also disagree on the child, senior, student and resident rates and on the age band a child ticket covers. Both were live in August 2026. Check the total before paying.

On access, the centre states that it is fully accessible to people with disabilities and that a storage service is available, and publishes nothing more detailed than that, which is worth knowing if a specific need has to be confirmed. The virtual reality room carries its own restrictions, and they too differ between the language versions: the English page sets the headsets at ages 13 and up, the Hebrew page at 10 and up, and both bar them for pregnant women and people with epilepsy.